Training and Development

The Martha K. Selig Educational Institute is the training and development center of The Jewish Board, offering social service and mental health professionals the knowledge and skills needed for meeting challenges in the communities they serve.

Our trainings are widely acclaimed as being innovative and leading edge. Selig Institute trainers are community practitioners who merge academic expertise with practice-based wisdom to create smart, flexible, hands-on trainings. This synergy brings the best of mental health and human service knowledge to the professionals we train and the clients we serve.

The Selig Institute’s trainings consist of specialized, advanced training seminars; topical on-site and on-line workshops; community lectures and conferences, internship placements and, on occasion, collaborative research initiatives. In addition, we design and conduct customized training programs to meet the needs of particular organizations.

Chartered by the New York State Board of Regents, the Selig Institute offers courses with official certificates of completion and continuing education credits.

Customized Training and Development Programs

Today’s social service workers encounter clients who have been exposed to a wide range of adverse life events: trauma, mental illness, community and interpersonal violence, institutionalized racism, homophobia, and more.

We help social workers, supervisors, psychologists, expressive therapists, milieu counselors, teachers, child welfare workers, and others learn how to choose and use best practices so they can deliver effective services, including customized trainings to address issues such as:

Training on Race, Culture, and Racism. Our staff offers instruction and consultation to improve the effectiveness of services for people from diverse backgrounds and to explore the impact of race and culture on systems, clients, and staff.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. We train practitioners in an evidence-based model that helps clients learn to manage their feelings and change their behaviors to improve functioning and reduce distress.

Skills Training in Affective and Interpersonal Regulation (STAIR). We introduce clinicians working with traumatized adolescents and adults to this evidence-based model that resolves PTSD symptoms and builds social and emotional competencies.

Building a Trauma-Informed System of Care. We help organizations learn how to create a framework of understanding, recognizing, and responding to the effects of all types of trauma on individuals, families, communities, and providers.